


The Satedan and His Silence

by JyaGhost



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 05:58:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6067735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JyaGhost/pseuds/JyaGhost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A legend from a lost world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Satedan and His Silence

~~~~~

The Satedan came through the Ring of the Ancestors five turns of the seasons ago. The King’s Healers attended him before he took his place inside Fighters’ Hall.

Visitors to the world believed the Fighters were merely slaves trained for mock combat to please the masses. Few knew of their true purpose -- a hidden-in-plain-sight army with which to battle the wraith should the agreement between King and Hive be severed.

Not that the world didn’t have slaves, but those were for the bedchambers, households and fields of the world. Slaves could be sold to the Cull pens for a credit on their household taxes, and those would be fed to the wraith along with the criminals.

Criminals like the ones who went out to other worlds and took prisoners that they sold as legitimate slaves. Slaves were trained from birth to their duties. Free born individuals could never do as fine a job as a slave, and such people were always ferreted out and returned to their former home.

It’s said the King took great pleasure in watching the wraith Queen herself feed from the criminals. He gave her those it took the most effort to catch; the slyest, the most clever or brazen.

Sometimes though, a free born prisoner slipped through the system of checks and balances in the world and remained a slave. Such is the case of the one known only as Silence.

He fought like a demon against his capture, managing to free four companions before succumbing to the power of a stolen wraith weapon.

Brought to market eleven moons ago, his captors sold him to the Cull pens, knowing in an instant they would be caught out for what they truly were if they tried to pass him off as anything but a problem slave. He was healthy and strong; they were given a large amount of credit for him.

The Master of the Fighters, one of the King’s most trusted men, found him there, awaiting death. For reasons unknown, the Master paid for the free born from his own pocket and took him to Fighters’ Hall, giving him as a gift to the Satedan.

It was the Satedan who named him Silence, for the free born would answer no questions, would not vocalize anything at all. He walked with barely heard steps, and it was joked by some of the kitchen slaves that he should be made to wear a bell because of that.

The Healer of Fighters’ Hall noted that for a slave who was so troublesome to his former owners that he’d been sold to the Cull pens, Silence served the Satedan willingly and well. Always there was chilled wine or water to drink and food to nibble. Always the Satedan’s rooms and clothes were kept neat and spotlessly clean. Never did the Healer see marks on Silence's body that would indicate that his most excellent service was being forced.

The stitches Silence made to ripped clothing were fine work, and the Healer borrowed him once or twice from the Satedan for mending a Fighter’s facial wounds so they would leave no scar.

Once or twice, Silence displayed a small amount of unusual medical skill, but because he refused to speak, they could never discover what precisely he knew or where he learned it.

Silence was known to the other Fighters. He avidly watched the battles and sometimes seemed to be holding himself back from joining conversations on strategy that happened around him. He carried his owner’s equipment to and from the Field, fetched him water and cleansed his minor wounds. Watching the pair together, one would assume Silence slaked his owner’s lust with as much care and devotion as he did everything else.

Only the Healer knew that the Satedan - Ronon - was not requiring Silence to serve him sexually. They slept apart, and barring Ronon being injured on the field of combat, they never touched. The Healer thought that that, more than anything, kept Silence faithfully by Ronon’s side.

The legend of them came from two incidents. A rival Fighter became jealous that the Satedan had been given a personal slave. Jealous that Ronon would not share that gift with anyone else. So he invoked rights and a code that hadn’t been used for decades, yet had never been repealed or removed from the books.

He challenged the Satedan to Mortal Combat. The prize was life and Silence. The idiot made it clear that while Ronon’s blood was cooling on the ground, he would claim Silence in the most base way and as often as possible.

A Mortal Combat was nearly unheard of, and it was a packed Field that witnessed it. The challenger fought without honor, throwing dirt into the Satedan’s eyes when Ronon was a hairsbreadth from winning fair.

Badly wounded, slowly dying, Ronon lay on the Field and watched his rival triumphantly stroll towards Silence.

Only to meet his end as Silence walked forward and simply slit his would-be owner's throat.

Without a backwards glance, Silence stepped over the body and knelt by Ronon. He ripped his clothing into shreds to use as staunches for the bleeding.

In his booth above the Field, the King declared the kill just, and the Healer was dispatched immediately to save Ronon.

A day later, three heavily armed men and a woman came through the Ring of the Ancestors. They were searching for a missing kinsman, and had heard tell he was among the world’s population.

The Master of the Fighters himself escorted them to the Fighters’ Hall, and to the rooms where the Satedan and his Silence lived.

The foursome knew Silence at a glance, but he remained true to his new name and would not respond to them. The more they called him Major and Lorne, the more he stayed by his owner’s side.

The youngest man left, returning with their world’s Healer hours later. The soft-voiced man echoed the Healer of the Fighters that Ronon would live. Silence paid him no more mind than the others.

In desperation and anger, the male leader asked the Master of Fighters how much it would be to purchase Ronon from the King. Silence’s free born life had been confirmed, that he would not be immediately returned home was unthinkable.

Ronon was under King’s geas however. The Healers had saved him from the wraith to serve the King. No one knew how long that geas was to hold the Satedan to the world.

Ronon refused to answer and refused to leave, ordering Silence away from his side, to go back to his own people.

The hatred and anger in Silence’s eyes needed no words to accompany them as he finally acknowledged his kin.

Because his owner had told him to, Silence left for his original home with the five visitors. Within hours, Ronon’s condition took a turn for the worse.

Some say Silence’s people were responsible for the wraith breaking the alliance. In their anger over the imprisonment and enslavement of their brother, they attacked the Hive in the false name of the King, starting the massacre of the world before the week had ended.

Others say that they had arrived as a warning of the wraith’s treachery. They did not hold the entire world responsible for the actions of a treacherous few. Their actions after the attacks said more for the latter theory than the former.

You see, there was no mistaking what they were. Silence’s people, like Silence himself, were Children of the Ancestors, come from the mighty city of Atlantis.

As the shattered world picked up it’s pieces and tried to begin again, Silence returned. He cared nothing for anyone save Ronon, but his people were another matter. They readily assisted all who needed them.

Having survived both his injuries and the wraith attack, Ronon recovered his strength and will to live at extraordinary rates with Silence again by his side. Before coming to the world, he’d despised the wraith. Now he hunted them with a fire in his chest that only Silence could control.

Of the world’s survivors, only Ronon lives in the Ancestor’s ancient home. As he served the King, he chose to serve Atlantis.

Whether Silence remained as he was or returned to Lorne, the name of his birth, no one knows.

All that is told is that they are out there together. Forever battling the wraith. Forever devoted to each other.

The End


End file.
